The article which appeared in the Readers Digest Living Green: Ranking the best (and worst) countries: By Matthew E. Kahn, PhD, and Fran Lostys has been spreading like wildfire as Reuters carried it in all their language distributions.
To calm our nerves we again went to enjoy the great autumn sunset.
Contemplation forced us to send this comment to the Editors of Readers Digest and also post a similar comment on one of their country editions (Australia).
As current residents in Finland, we (authors of "Handbook for Survival in Finland) disagree with ranking of Finland as No. 1.
It is far from reality.
It is a great country viewed from outside.
It polishes its image like an apple.
Peel the skin.
You see a core filled with worms.
Public sources used are those which only show the polished outside. See our blog entry at
http://jmatthan.blogspot.com/2007/10/finland-best-for-living.html
Annikki & Jacob
The sources used are given here:
We analyzed data from two top sources covering 141 nations to rank the planet's greenest, most livable places. Our analysis delved into social factors (income and education, for instance) and environmental measures (see our chart for who scores highest and lowest for some of them, and how the United States, the best overall, and the worst overall stack up)......
.....The World's Greenest, Most Livable Cities
Using different data, we analyzed 72 major international cities and ranked them in terms of being green and livable. The sources included The Millennium Cities Database for Sustainable Transport (2001) by Jeff Kenworthy and Felix Laube of Australia's Murdoch University, the World Bank's Development Economic Research Group Estimates, and our own reporting on local environmental laws, energy prices, garbage production and disposal, and parkland.
Paul Wolfowitz's, the creator of a beautiful Green Zone in Baghdad, World Bank as a source - a laughable idea!
Was there any consideration of the ghastly smell that covers many cities in Finland from the pulp production chimney stacks. One professor could not even stay a full day in Oulu as he would break out with a rash!
And here is a totally ridiculous statement:
To get greener, countries must do more to capitalize on national strengths. Finland, among the world's largest exporters of wind-power technology, produces less than 1 percent of its own electricity via wind power, despite average coastal wind speeds of 15 mph, 50 percent stronger than those in Chicago.
Finland has one major wind-power technology producer making 1 - 3 MW units and it is owned by an Indian company!
A look at the cities rankings shows only one Finnish city, Helsinki ranked at No. 21, and we would not like to live in Helsinki. Having lived in three other ranked cities, London (27) Chennai (65) and Mumbai (70), none of them could be ranked even close to another city where Jacob lived, Delhi and New Delhi, which is not even in the rankings!
This is a true case of "the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence".
How we wish the authors had stepped across that fence to check their facts with some ground level investigation!
As they say, a little knowledge is dangerous.
It is sad as this article will be quoted a million times around the world for a publicity hungry small country as Finland. The myth will be propagated while the truth is left far far behind!
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